What we do

museum planning

Every significance assessment includes some advice on priorities and future directions for the museum and its collection. This is in fact required under the guidelines most often used for these assessments - those for Community Heritage Grants managed by the National Library of Australia.

But Crozier Schutt Associates have also been asked to give detailed advice on future planning for museums which is quite separate from collection significance assessment. One of our first projects of this kind was for the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital Museum of Nursing History. More recently, we worked with the design firm Brandi Projects on the development of a master plan for the Australian Workers' Heritage Centre at Barcaldine.

Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital Museum of Nursing History

The project for the RBWH Museum of Nursing History was both to assess the significance of the Museum's collection and to develop a ten-year forward plan. The significance assessment was detailed and comprehensive. The forward plan was based on extended interviews with representatives of the Museum's many stakeholders in the hospitals and associated museums and universities. The project took several months and produced a wide range of recommendations regarding the ways in which the Museum's stakeholders might work together to ensure the future development of the Museum.

The Australian Workers' Heritage Centre, Barcaldine

Many of the AWHC's exhibitions were worn and required additional investment to renovate and renew them, and to give fuller expression to the Centre's key theme of the history of Australian workers. Crozier Schutt Associates and the design firm Brandi Projects reviewed the exhibitions and developed a forward plan which became the basis of the Centre's fundraising and grant applications. Two projects identified in the plan have already been successfully delivered - an interpretation of Kunwarara railway station, relocated to the Centre in 1994, and an exhibition on a key event for the Centre, the Shearers' Strike of 1891, and the subsequent rise of the Australian Workers' Union and the Australian Labor Party. The exhibition is housed in a former meeting hall of the Shearers' Union, a key precursor union of the AWU.